Hannah Claudia Riedler has obtained a master’s degree with a focus on Eastern European history at the University of Vienna. She is currently a doctoral student and project assistant at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria.

Her research interests include the occupation of Poland during the Second World War, the history of the Holocaust and the deportations in Poland in the Soviet and the German occupation zones. She was a fellow at the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich as well as the Deutsches Historisches Institut (DHI) in Warsaw.

During her EHRI-fellowship she focuses on examining the effects of the new border between Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union on the population in these territories. By looking at the border as a defining feature of the population policy, she aims to explore this proximity of the “enemy” as a factor influencing Jewish as well as non-Jewish life in both zones of occupation as well as the various responses to this influence.

Hannah after she finished her Conny Kirstel Fellowship in Berlin:

My stay at the Bundesarchiv was a complete success! Thanks to the SS-records I was able to reconstruct a great deal of perpetrators‘ biographies as well as the daily life of UWZ-employees. The long hours spent working on a microfilm scanner were made pleasant and felt shorter thanks to the friendly and helpful staff in the Reading Room.